Lucy Foley-The Book of Lost and Found

Lucy Foley has written a novel of lost love that spans three generations with the novel The Book of Lost and Found. Kate loses her mother, a ballerina,  and her adoptive grandmother within a short span of time. Before her grandmother passes, she tells Kate a secret she had kept, that Kate’s real grandmother had come searching for her lost daughter years ago. This revelation prompts Kate to begin searching into the past, traveling to Europe and Corsica, and New York, trying to learn who her grandmother really was. The story is told in both Kate’s present and in flashbacks to her grandparent’s era from the 20’s to the war, with Kate searching for the answers she seeks while trying to hold onto her memories of her mother. It is a novel of love lost, mother and daughter relationships, and dealing with a loss while keeping memories alive. Kate finds a large portion of the information she is seeking on Corsica, with the help of a man who knew and loved her grandmother, and she is able to begin dealing with the loss of her own mother and possibly begin anew with a love of her own.  I thought this was a fantastic read, and the story kept me turning the pages to find out what happens to Kate, and what happened in the past. 

Foley, Lucy, The Book of Lost and Found, Back Bay Books(Little, Brown and Company), August 2015, Isbn:978-0-316-37505-4

First Time Author Does It Right

The Life We Bury, a first novel out by Allen Eskens, is a fantastic read hands down, and one of the best novels that I have read from a new author recently.

     Joe is a college student who has enrolled in classes at the last minute, and has to take one English class that still has available space. The problem is, his assignment over the semester is to interview and write a biography of someone who is elderly. Joe has no family who fits this category, so he goes to a local nursing home attempting to find a subject to write about. Enter Carl, dying of pancreatic cancer, and who has been paroled from prison for committing a rape and murder of a teenage neighbor thirty years before. Joe begins doing research on the murder, and begins to see that the evidence against Carl, while at the time of his trial seemed ironclad, some of the details don't quite add up. Joe meets Virgil, one of Carl's army buddies in Vietnam, and Carl's only supporter, and he begins to look at Carl's case in a different light. Now Joe is racing against time and Carl's impending death from cancer to try and clear his name, and persuade the authorities to reopen the case for a second look. Along with trying to determine the truth about the night of the murder, Joe is also dealing with his alcoholic mother, who pulls frequent "disappearing acts", leaving Joe to look out for his younger autistic brother. The story sweeps the reader along at a fast pace, and leaves you hoping that Joe can determine Carl's innocence before it is too late. I am looking forward to reading more from Eskens after reading his debut novel.

Eskens, Allen, The Life We Bury, Seventh Street Books, New York, October 2014. 

Isbn: 978-1-61614-998-7